Many Australians who visit Gallipoli go to honour a grandfather, great-grandfather or distant relative.
Joan Altwasser will be following in the footsteps of her father.
Henry Hotston was a soldier in the famed 7th Light Horse Regiment which fought at Gallipoli from May 1915.
When Ms Altwasser, aged 81, travels to Turkey to visit Anzac Cove for the centenary in a month's time, she will be going to honour the man who served at Gallipoli, fought across the Middle East and returned home to start a new life and raise a family.
Mr Hotston was born in the NSW regional town of Orange, one of three sons of a Baptist minister.
He enlisted in 1914 at Liverpool, joining the Light Horse and sailing for Egypt in December that year.
The Light Horse did not take part in the April 25, 1915 landing; they arrived in May, 1915 and fought as infantry without their horses, which were not suited to the steep hills and deep gullies of Gallipoli.
Trooper Hotston was promoted to the rank of sergeant during his time in Turkey, fell sick, was evacuated from the Gallipoli peninsula and returned.
He stayed until the massive evacuation carried out over the two nights of December 18 and 19, 1915.
Gallipoli was not the end of Mr Hotston's war.
The 7th Light Horse went on to fight the Turkish army in Palestine and took part in crucial battles to capture the stronghold of Gaza.
In 1918 the then Sergeant-Major Hotston was wounded in the head while fighting in Jordan.
He had a close call but his brother was not so lucky: Sydney Hotston was killed during fighting in Belgium in 1917.
Hotstons did more than their share for the nation - Sydney and Henry's other brother, Frederick, served in the war, as did three Hotston cousins.
After the war, when asked about the patch on his scalp where no hair grew, Mr Hotson said he had been shot in the head but he didn't say much about his wartime experience.
"I don't recall him talking very much about it when I was a child," Ms Altwasser said.
Ms Altwasser had two sisters and "when boys started coming to the house" her father would speak to the visitors about the war but only about tactics of battles, never the hardships or horrors.
"I asked him once as a child whether he had ever shot anyone and he said he didn't know," Ms Altwasser said.
When the war ended Mr Hotson married, settled in the northern Sydney suburb of Crows Nest and built a life, supporting his young family during the Great Depression by making and selling orange marmalade.
He later found a job as a linesman with the Postmaster-General's Department and made ammunition at a factory in Lithgow during World War II.
Ms Altwasser says her father came back from the war with a great admiration for the Turks.
She has visited Gallipoli before but this year will be her first Dawn Service.
"It's a very emotional place," she said.
She is travelling to Turkey with her daughter, Lisa Chandler, and knows it won't be an easy trip.
"It's going to be a very long day and long night, freezing conditions, and you are not allowed to lie down," she said.
"I'm going for his sake, not for my own.
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